For Maurice Williamson, cutting code in C++ ranks just below sex in terms of pure pleasure. Such enthusiasm for the lingua franca of engineering programming would be unremarkable if Williamson were a mere propeller head, but the 44-year-old Eric Clapton look-alike happens to be a government minister. Specifically, the Honorable Maurice Donald Williamson MP is Minister of Transport, Minister of Communications, Minister for Information Technology, Minister of Broadcasting, Minister of Statistics, and Associate Minister of Health of New Zealand, a Pacific island nation known to its inhabitants as "God's Own Country," or simply "Godzone."

Having so many portfolios to look after prevents Williamson from surfing the Net for more than half an hour each night. But communications and broadcasting don't take up much of his time because New Zealand has radically deregulated both. Anybody - including foreign telcos and cable operators - can do anything they like in these areas. Williamson will freely tell you that Saddam Hussein could run a radio station in New Zealand if he wished. If you own spectrum, which you can purchase in a government-run auction, you can use it for cellular phones, TV, radio, whatever - you and the market decide. This freedom from red tape puts Godzone, in the words of Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Lab (see "Being Nicholas," in this issue), "so far ahead of the US, it is the mouse that roared." Make that the kiwi that roared, after the long-beaked fiightless bird Godzoners have adopted as their national symbol.

In the wake of radical deregulation, telcos have fiocked to New Zealand. Ameritech and Bell Atlantic own just under half of Telecom Corporation of New Zealand Ltd., a former government monopoly. MCI and Bell Canada are backing a long-distance competitor to Telecom New Zealand, BellSouth runs a cell-phone network and, as Telecom New Zealand begins trial testing fiber-to-the-curb video, at least two US cable operators are gearing up to build their own full-service broadband networks.

What they have found is an astonishingly beautiful country - hot springs and geysers in the north, forests and fiords in the south - coupled with what appears to be an astonishingly beautiful regulatory environment. In fact, it's the very model of what many US legislators and lobbyists have labored to create these past few years.

"There are very few places in the world where things are so driven by business realities," says Jack Matthews, a US expatriate who manages Kiwi Cable Company Ltd., the country's first cable TV operator. "What's happening here in New Zealand is a precursor for what will happen in other countries."

"It's an experience our own government should look at care-fully," affirms Bell Atlantic CEO Ray Smith, "especially as Congress rewrites the United States telecommunications law." Here's some advice for Newt and Company from Roderick Deane, CEO of Telecom New Zealand, on what to do with the FCC: "Put a bomb under it, blow it up," Deane says. "Regulations slow the pace of competition."

That may be hyperbole, given that the government in Godzone does have a role, if a limited one. There are basic antitrust regulations on the books, and the state acts as a clearinghouse for resources such as spectrum. "In New Zealand, the current policy regime aims to encourage competition and development in the industry," Williamson explained in a recent speech. "Entry into the market is restricted only by willingness to pay the market price for a radio frequency license, if required. There are no specific restrictions on the introduction of new broadcasting technologies. There are no restrictions on the level of overseas ownership. There are no 'must carry' rules for cable operators. Essentially, the government aims to encourage investment in the industry. You are free to prosper in the broadcasting industry. You are equally free to misjudge the market and go
broke."